Signs Unnoticed
by Sarah1281
Summary: After the destruction of the Truffula trees, the Once-Ler is left to try to figure out where it all went wrong and how he could have possibly missed all the signs that things weren't as good as they seemed. And yeah, he should have listened to the Lorax.


Signs Unnoticed

Disclaimer: I do not own the Lorax.

In hind-sight, I suppose I really should have trusted that the ancient guardian of the forests and speaker for the trees knew what he was talking about. And I tried, I really did. It's just…for all he claimed to be so mythical I _never_ managed to see him doing anything all that unusual. I kept asking him about it and he kept telling me that that just wasn't how things worked.

Okay, that _really_ didn't help with the believability and neither does the fact that he insists that the one time he _did_ do something spectacular I was standing only a few feet away and somehow failed to notice. Who fails to notice a legendary creature flashily appearing out of a tree trunk when they're within eyesight of said appearance?

Well…according to the Lorax, I'm that kind of person.

Even after all this time, I still find that a little hard to believe.

Actually, just the fact that the Lorax looks nothing like any other creature I'd ever seen before and, despite not being human, can talk at all and appears to be able to understand the animals (though my mother claimed he was just faking and did an admirable job of faking her own conversation with Pipsqueak) might lend some credence to his claim. Still, he was short and orange with a ridiculous mustache so it wasn't easy to take him seriously, especially with my family always talking in my other ear about how wrong he was.

My family.

They've never been the most…encouraging or magnanimous of individuals but I never thought they wanted to hurt anybody. And after two solid decades of doubt, the fact that they finally had faith in me and were letting _me_ provide for _them_…it was a heady feeling, I can't deny it.

Every moment of disbelief in me was made up for but five times as much enthusiasm and for once in my life they believed that I could do anything. I was a rising star when they showed up and my stock only kept rising.

They did not like the Lorax and it was the easiest thing in the world to see why. His heart was always in the right place, I've never denied that. He wanted to protect the trees and the animals and he wasn't shy about it. Of course, the trouble was that he saw my growing thneed empire as a threat to everything he held dear.

He's also not really very nice when it comes to threats to the things he's sworn to protect. All my family saw was this little orange creature who wanted us to pack up and leave and abandon our one chance for success. Every time we ever did anything, there he was arguing and ranting about how we had to stop. And no matter how fond you are of a person, if the only time you ever see them is when they're telling you that you're wrong, wrong, wrong then it's going to get a little grating.

My family didn't even have the fond memories that I did of the Lorax. And they were pretty fond for all that he almost killed me that one time and refused to admit that we were friends. It may be petty but if he hadn't then I might have been more inclined to take his concerns seriously. But if he didn't feel it then he didn't feel it and bluntless had always been a trait of his. It was painful to see him after awhile because I _had_ been fond of him and all he ever wanted to talk about was how terrible I was.

It probably also would have helped if he had been a little bit more clear about what was actually happening. I won't pretend that I _wanted_ to face the fact that my company and my happiness was coming at the cost of nature itself but if he had made me face it, just shoved my face right into what I was doing then I _would_ have actually faced it.

I wasn't able to stay in denial once I saw the last of the Truffula trees fall and if he had come to me and shown me the reality of 'a few trees dying' before it was too late then maybe I could have done something. Scratch that, I could have _definitely_ done something. It was my damn company and I made the decisions regardless of what the rest of my family wanted.

I wonder sometimes if they knew what was happening and what was going to happen. I mean, it seems absurd that we could have _all_ missed it but then it's just as absurd that they would have noticed and said nothing. Even if they didn't care about the environment, they had to have known that cutting down _all_ of the trees meant that one day we would have to stop making thneeds and that's just bad for business. Why would they want to sabotage our wealth? It doesn't make any sense.

So yeah, I can believe that they didn't know. But the Lorax…he was out there every day. He knew this would happen before it ever occurred to anyone else.

So why wouldn't he force me to face reality _before_ the trees were gone forever? I know that he tried but he only used words and not anything real and tangible. Of course the trees nearest to the factory would be the last to go because they did make things very scenic and were nice to look at.

If he had just told me that he wanted to take me to a place that would prove to me that I needed to change things and that if I went then he'd leave me alone and then led me to one of the desolated groves and then another and another…I didn't want to face things but I'm pretty sure that I would have gone because I truly didn't believe that there _was_ anything to see and the thought of not getting hounded all the time would have been a tempting one. So why didn't he? For all that my family tried to keep him off the premises he somehow always found a way in.

And the workers! The ones who cut down those trees _had_ to have known what was happening so why didn't they speak up? Was a fear of losing their jobs really worth all of this?

I think I might be blaming other people again and I know that's not fair because it was my machines sent to cut those trees down on my orders for my thneed but…I never meant for this to happen and I couldn't have stopped it if I didn't know it was coming.

I _didn't_ stop it because I didn't know that it was coming.

Yes the Lorax had told me but his words, while very powerful and dramatic, just weren't enough to convince me when my eyes were telling a different story. And he was so freaked out by the loss of _one_ tree – having a funeral and everything! – that I just know that he would have been in my face about it even if I wasn't in danger of destroying the environment.

I guess that reseeding would have been a good move either way but it honestly hadn't occurred to me. I had travelled the land pretty extensively before becoming a success and there were a ton of trees everywhere. The thought that I was in danger of wiping all of them out…it was just absurd.

I guess that's the main reason.

The Lorax can say that I'm blind to my effect on others all he likes but the fact of the matter is that I was always so terribly, secretly afraid of being a failure. That's why I tried so hard and refused to admit that all of my many, many critics might have a point. And in the end it was only the fact that I failed to throw my thneed in the garbage and instead hit a person that I managed to start a trend at all.

I was just one little person who had never managed to do much and it was pretty far into my success before I could even start trusting any of it. Of course, in this case that insecurity might have saved the trees because if I kept looking for that catch then I might have stumbled across it a lot sooner.

How could one tiny person who had never managed to make much of an impression on the world _possibly_ create such devastation? Even with all of my success and the town even being named for my invention, I still couldn't quite imagine being able to change things so fundamentally and so irrevocably. It seemed like arrogance in the extreme to even imagine that I could.

And yet…it happened. I didn't see it and everyone else was either just as blind or decided not to tell me. The only one who ever even tried was the Lorax and look where that got him! Until he pointed to that last fallen tree…Well, when I didn't think that I was doing any harm why _should_ I have stopped? It doesn't make any sense to stop a profitable action when no one is being hurt.

Looking around now at nothing but death and devastation I don't understand how I could have missed so much but I'm just as aware that back then I couldn't even begin to imagine any of this.

And now everyone's left or holed up in that artificial bubble of a town (still inconceivably called Thneedville) and I'm left alone out here.

I could go to Thneedville and live quite comfortably, I know. I still have plenty of money for all the good that's ever done me and I do own some property there.

Just the same, what's the point? All anyone there wants to do is forget and I _can't_. It's not even a matter of not wanting to – because I don't, not really – but I _can't_. It's ironic that it took so long to see what I was doing but now that I have the image is burned into my retina and I see it every time I close my eyes. I also can't face all those people who either blame me for what I've done or, worse, don't when I know that they should. All those people who are starting to forget that anything's wrong at all.

And it's going to stay wrong, probably forever. I don't know if those animals found a better place to live but I hope that they did. Either way, they won't be coming back. Even if things did miraculously change around here, how would they know to return and why would they want to pack up the lives they've painstakingly rebuilt to return here anyway? I don't even know what happened to the Lorax. He's probably up in the sky right now shaking his head because he was right and I couldn't see it and now things are ruined and it's gotten to the point where someone is making a fortune selling _air_ of all things.

There is one tiny hope. One small seed still salvaged. The Lorax threw it at my head once when he was ranting about how each knew tree life only had an axe to look forward to when they became fully grown and how monstrous that was.

It isn't much and it won't be able to grow in this polluted environment (still polluted and getting worse even though the thneed factories have shut down because the air factories have started up and I'll bet anything that clean air is 'bad for business.' I'll never understand people like that. He didn't destroy the environment and I did but at least I didn't do it _intentionally_) but one day, perhaps…

It's the only chance we've got.

But even if one day there is a place to plant the seed, I know that I'll never be the one to do it.

I'll need to find someone who cares enough and whose hands are clean of the blood of this land. Or, given my isolation, they'll need to find me.

After all, given the absolute mess I've made of everything else I've ever touched, how could I possibly be trusted not to kill this little seed, too?

Review Please!


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